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These words of the Psalmist are a prophecy of the Incarnation.

I. First, it plainly means THE NATURAL BODY, which He took of the substance of the Blessed Virgin. All that makes up the natural perfection of man as a moral and reasonable intelligence, together with a mortal body, He assumed into the unity of His person.

II. As there was a natural, so there is A SUPERNATURAL PRESENCE OF THE BODY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. He said, "The bread that I will give is My flesh," &c.; "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man," &c. And when at the Last Supper He gave this great sacrament to His apostles, He said, "This is My body, this is My blood." It is not for us to attempt to explain the secrets of this mystery. Who can reveal the manner of the resurrection of the body or the mystery of the Incarnation? Then here let us stay our thoughts. What He has said, that He will give, in spirit, substance, and reality. It is enough for us to know that as truly as the life and substance of the first creation are sustained and perpetuated until now, so in the second, which is the mystical Vine, He is root and trunk, branch and fruit; wholly in us, and we in Him.

III. There is yet another and A WIDER MYSTERY SPRINGING UP OUT OF THE LAST. The natural body of our Lord Jesus Christ is, as it were, the root out of which, by the power of the Holy Ghost, His mystical body is produced; and therefore He seems to take this title, "I am the root and the offspring of David" — the offspring according to the descent of the first creation, the root as the beginning of the new. This great work of the regeneration He began to fulfil when, at His descent into hell, He gathered to Himself the saints who of old were sanctified through the hope of His coming; and although "they without us" could not, when on earth, "be made perfect," yet at His descent unto them they "came behind in no gift," but were made equal to the saints of the kingdom. Then began the growth and expansion of the mystical Vine. Upon this unity of patriarchs, prophets, and saints of old were engrafted apostles and evangelists, and all the family of the regeneration. The body which, in its natural and local conditions, was enclosed in an upper chamber or wound in grave-clothes, has multiplied its life and substance as the first Adam in the family of mankind throughout the generations of God's elect. Such is the mystical body of Christ.

IV. ARE THERE, THEN, THREE BODIES OF CHRIST? God forbid; but one only — one in nature, truth, and glory. But there are three manners, three miracles of Divine omnipotence, by which that one body has been and is present — the first as mortal and natural; the second supernatural, real, and substantial; the third mystical by our incorporation.

(Archdeacon H. E. Manning.)

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KJV: Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:

WEB: Therefore when he comes into the world, he says, "Sacrifice and offering you didn't desire, but you prepared a body for me;